Category Archives: Spain

USA’s Love for Ancient Rome. Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times: “We like stories of Rome, I think, because in spite of the intervening centuries we can recognize ourselves there: a technologically superior mercantile and military superpower pressing an enormous thumb upon the Western world, its bustling cities full of bars and restaurants and hot-drink shops and theaters. Positively Dickensian in the way it trains an eye on both the powerful and the poor, Rome [the HBO BBC Tv Series] wants us to see the present in the past — offering cocktail parties, rich girls smoking hemp (“I brought back two sacks from Macedonia sooooo much better than the Italian kind”), a criminals’ den that looks like nothing so much as a 1st century BC [The Sopranos’] Bada Bing.”

The German slave. Getting back to a typical Sex and the city (of Rome) topic, I read in a blog that a US high school teacher used to describe Ancient Rome’s history as a sequence of sex, battle, sex, battle, which seems a little bit too limited a view to me. In any case, for you (now disappointed and bored) sex weirdos, a brief quote from the Boston Globe that will make you happy:

“Take, for instance, this cozy domestic scene in the ‘Rome’ première. It’s the morning of Caesar’s funeral, and the ever-lusty Mark Antony (James Purefoy ) refuses to get out of bed unless Atia [Polly Walker, see smal picture above,] dressed in her funeral garb, agrees to have sex. Impatient and unsure of her social status now that her uncle Caesar is gone, Atia coldly refuses him. Ever practical, though, she then barks an order at her slaves: ‘Fetch that German slut from the kitchen’. ”
Read the entire review by Matthew Gilbert.

Funny, although a bit on the masculist side, this comment from a fan of the ‘Rome’ series: “Oh, would that we all had these convenient German sluts around. But, you know, now they’re all union and hard to keep on staff”.

Watch now this trailer from the TV series regarding Roman different moral code (which is not to be seen by minors, who are thus warned.)

Spanish Cousins Success. “One secret of Spain’s success has been its links to Latin America – an excellent testing ground for Spanish foreign investment and a useful source of Spanish-speaking immigrants.
Spain’s immigration policy has been more liberal than in most European countries, adding some 4m to the 40m population in the past decade. Those from Latin America, in particular, have proved swift to integrate. The proportion of children from mixed marriages increased from 1.8 per cent in 1995 to 11.5 per cent in 2005.”